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My eyes did not want to leave the water. I did not want to look anywhere but before me.

Any shift in my vision would remind me of the dangers that lay all around me, the danger at my back, the dangerous who held my leash. I felt my hands shake, and I gripped my rifle tighter, bringing my knees to my chest and pressing my back against the wood of the door harder, as if it would anchor me. Our boat cut through brackish water without a second thought, the wood and lacquer under my feet no less at home on this river as the fish swirling father below. Twilight had come, the lashes of yellow and red bleeding away from the sky. The mist that licked the shores had already begun to swell, lacing in and out of the trees and twisting into a thousand faceless ghouls watching me from every angle. With every minute, the sky grew more dark, and the sounds of the beasts of the river calling out to me. In my mind, I could see millions of eyes watching me from behind the cattails and within the reeds. Here I knew fear, here I feared what lay just out of reach, but what would seize me if I dared step too close to the shore.

A slam on the wall from behind me nearly made me leap from my perch, a pair of wicked cackles echoing through the slot in the door whipping my face with shame. Here at water level, I was alone, save the pair locked behind me. With how they cackled and taunted me, one wouldn't have guessed that they knew their fate. Upon our boat, many like them were ferried. From the hands of sheriffs, overseers, vigilantes aching for a minute longer with their prey, we dragged them from their homes to their destiny, be it

the warm embrace of the gallows or the bite of lead. I used to talk to them, learn what of their life paved the way to our shared journey, but I found that every time I learned what sin burned upon their back had earned their ticket, the more I felt it weighing upon my own.

It did not matter to them that their lives would be taken beyond the miles of blood-gutted flies to come, all that mattered was that the one charged with guarding them, keeping them locked away upon this raft, was easy to scare. Easy to hurt.

I hadn't asked for this charge, but this is what keeps me from a seat on the other side of this door.

I heard a dry sound behind me, a cough. No, not a cough, a gag. Choking, one of them was choking. I had to rescue him, even him. He needed to face what he was due, and I turned and threw the door open. Before I could take a step, I took a fist, and before I could recover, he was gone. Before my second charge could escape, I forced the door closed and bolted him inside, and he thrashed and tore at the wood as I tried to chase his brother. How he had loosened his chains from the wall I will never know, but he still wore his cuffs around his wrists and ankles as he sailed off the boat. Even with them, he still was so fast. Too fast. He needed to be, lest we turn around and catch him. Lest the beasts caught him first. I did not know what to do, I froze, staring at him. We'd never reach him, he'd be free and I would be the one to occupy his chains. I was to guard him, and he would be lost in the dark water and rolling bank of fog. I watched my life swim away and I did nothing. This was the end.

A loud laugh from his brother reached my ears, and I could not stay still. I lifted my rifle and took aim.

One shot, through the thigh, and his scream lit the night brighter than the flash of powder. Not high enough to end him. But one ball of lead enough to drain that leg of strength, let that heavy iron brace do what it would. Let him slow and let him sink, just enough to keep him in the water when the alligators caught up.

I turned before I could see, even though the fog had already swallowed up the ripples and silhouettes. The thrashing limbs and bodies. But what I truly wished was that the fog would have blanketed us from the sound of it all, for the splashes and screams cut through the gray like the water and trees themselves had come alive, forcing us to bear witness to its power. Forcing me to answer for my crime.

As I turned, my eyes found those of my master, his seeming to gleam in the light as he looked down at me from his own perch. He'd clearly seen all, not lifting a finger at the sight of his prisoner trying to flee, content to watch me as I murdered a man. His only recourse? A short nod, before silently bidding me return to my post. With not a word, I sat down before the door once more.

I felt the shake of terror and panic at my back, inside the room of these ill-fated two. The rattle of chains. I found it odd, during the echo of that man's final few, he'd been quiet as a church mouse. But now, as even the echoes failed in the light, he now abandoned himself to fear. And sorrow? He was the runt of the litter, if his Atlas of kin could not endure, what chance did he have? He knew that his fate was lost, that any escape he faced would be found through the depths of the swamp or the fibers of a noose. The doomed sobbed behind me, and I rose immediately to my feet and I turned to his face without a second thought. With how he recoiled, I'd have thought my eyes bore slits. I turned my eyes back to the water, my eyes still scanning the horizon, my ears still focused behind me, my charge now pleasantly lighter.

When my eyes turned to the fog, I no longer saw faces in the trees, or beasts in the brush. Until now, I had feared what lay in the swamp, what demons hid from my sight and waited to strike. No longer…I had seen their faces. I'd given them a gift. I can sate their hunger with the easiest twitch of my finger, and not a soul would deny them. Deny me. I am not prey. I too am a predator. The beasts of nature, of flesh and blood, are what lie before me, silently awaiting who I give them next. Those demons I see now gleam in pale light with beady eyes and grizzled, scaled smirks bearing ivory fangs.

And yet, my heart does not beat so fast, now that I know what the reeds hold.